Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Didn’t Theresa May’s inaugural speech last week warm the
cockles of your heart?Or perhaps that
was acid reflux.Either way, it was a
timely warning that, no matter what back-stabbing chaos may temporarily afflict
the Tory Establishment, you can never underestimate their ability to switch
effortlessly back into people-shafting mode.

Not that you’d necessarily have picked that up from Theresa’s
language, which was so touchy-feely it bordered on harassment.Taking her words at face value, you’d almost
have expected her to appoint John McDonnell as Chancellor, with Florence
Nightingale in charge of Health and the Dalai Lama as Home Secretary.Who wouldn’t follow that honeyed voice to the
sunlit uplands of the brave new future, pausing only for a group hug before
leaping over the Brexit precipice in the sure knowledge we’d sprout life-preserving
angel wings?

Of course, it’s the oldest trick in the book for incoming
Tory overlords.You might call it the “reverse
Ronseal”: the art of spouting screeds of high-falutin’ blurb from your policy
tin before going gleefully on to do the exact opposite.Maggie Thatcher was an early exponent, with
her St Francis of Assisi tommy-rot, which conspicuously failed to mention “Where
there is industry, may we bring a wasteland” and “Where there is community, may
we bring isolated pockets of despair”. Tony
Blair, the party’s most celebrated undercover agent, glad-handed his way into
Downing Street to the strain of Things
Can Only Get Better, which was true only for his property portfolio.And in 2010, in a historic moment for the
vampire community, the key phrase was delivered by George Osborne, whose “We’re
all in this together” was a bare-faced admission of guilt dressed up as
solidarity.

Now, despite the tug of my genes and life experience, I don’t
wish to be a cynical old scrote.It’s juuuust conceivable that, despite having
21 years in the first-class carriage of the gravy train, a pension scheme
devised by a fairy godmother and a City high-flier hubby wheeling a monthly
king’s ransom home in a barrow, Theresa truly appreciates what it’s like to
struggle to get by, knock your pan in around the clock and still be only a gnat’s
ba’-hair away from rent arrears.

Perhaps her thoughts on the topic are scribbled on a Post-It
Note, headed Ordinary Humans - Key Features,
somewhere in the depths of her paperwork. They sure haven’t shown up anywhere in her political
choices, statements and actions.Instead, as part of the Cameron coterie, she voted, with not a jot of queasiness,
for policies that brought us the Bedroom Tax, Gradgrind economics and a million
extra foodbank clients.As Home
Secretary she was about as authoritarian as you can get without actually
donning jackboots, and if she ever helped struggling families it was by giving
them a taxi ride and police escort to the airport.

I suppose you can’t really blame Theresa and her mates for
the charade.After all, how would it
sound if they chose to be honest?“Hi,
we’re Tories.If you’re drowning, we’ll
throw you a rubber ring packed with bricks.If you’re managing to stay afloat, we’ll empty a bucket of piranha fish
into the pool.In so far as we tolerate
your existence at all, it’s because it amuses us to watch our sociopathic
fat-cat chums rip you off at every turn.”

But I digress. For indy-inclined
Scots, sitting transfixed with horror as the wall-to-wall coverage juddered on,
the key point in the speech actually arose earlier.Bearing in mind the UK government’s
discombobulation over Scotland’s reaction to Brexit, it came as no surprise
when, only three paragraphs in, Theresa tipped a bowl of cereal over our heads
with her eulogy to the precious, preciousss bond that is the Union.

Between waves of nausea we pictured David Mundell’s wee
tail wagging so energetically you could dip it in paint and undercoat the shed
in thirty seconds flat.And Ruthie Tank
Commander, Theresa’s principal adviser on photo-ops for Thatcher-wannabes, proudly
polishing her Privy Councillor prefect’s badge and dreaming of promotion to
Westminster.And, in a dank little editing
suite at Pacific Quay, the Reporting Scotland
team moaning ecstatically and having to go for a lie doon.

Theresa’s preoccupation with The Constitutional Question was
signalled even more blatantly a couple of days later, when she body-swerved a
COBRA meeting about events in Nice to materialise on Nicola Sturgeon’s doorstep
at Bute House.She couldn’t have got
there faster if those red shoes had been Ferrari roller-skates.(I know, I shouldn’t define a female
politician by her fashion choices, but, hey, we all slagged off Cameron for
wearing a pig’s head as a sporran, so I’m simply being even-handed.)

All leave was cancelled at the BBC’s mistranslation department,
as staff swung into action to garble Nicola’s nuanced position, keeping all
options firmly on the table, into “Ah’ve got a veto, so youse English basturts
are stuffed!” Andrew Marr’s Twitter hit squad surpassed themselves by pumping
out one lie, repeating it in a correction, then replacing both of them with a dollop
of cloth-eared speculation.Meanwhile, Gordon
Brewer’s Sunday Politics Scotland conversation
with Nicola continued his one-man project of failing to comprehend anything he’s
told, however simple, and blaming it on the interviewee.

The more events develop, the more obvious it becomes that,
on the squeaky-sphincter spectrum, the UK Establishment has moved well beyond “Occasional Embarrassing Toot”. The level of anger in
Scotland after last night’s Trident debate, when Theresa’s mask slipped and she
went full Cruella De Vil on us, should keep their intestinal gases bubbling
away nicely.And when Nicola’s finished
with them, it’s a fair bet that those Establishment sphincters will be playing “Flight
of the Bumble Bee” all day and all night.

If you’re thinking of entering the dry-cleaning business, go
for it!You couldn’t have picked a
better time.

Tuesday, 12 July 2016

So here I am, back at the keyboard, nervous as hell. Despite an absence of (ahem ahem) months the study
doesn’t look too bad, as long as you’re a fan of the “Miss Havisham” style of
interior decoration, and the cobwebs do help to keep the dust in place.A couple of squirts of Oust, and the removal
with tongs of a decaying cheese sandwich morsel, and I’m ready to hit the
blogging trail once again.

Who’d have imagined, when I wrote my last piece, that even the
Chilcot Report would be published before I cranked out the next one?Normally I’d defend such a hiatus by
explaining how I filled it with good deeds and humanitarian work, but Tony
Blair’s boak-inducing press conference has cornered the market in whey-faced
narcissism.Best simply to admit the
truth: sometimes a guy just needs a break in order to clear the gunk out of his
head and stop shouting “Arsehole!” at the TV every time Glenn Campbell lumbers into
view.

I probably just need a strong coffee, but at this early
stage in my creative rehab the challenge of topical commentary seems more
daunting than ever.Previously, I could
write a blog post over a couple of days and pimp it for a week on Twitter
before it started to curl at the edges and smell of pee.Now, even if I chunter it out as if
commentating on the Grand National, within half an hour all the main characters
will have resigned, been knifed in the back, decided to spend more time with
their drinks cabinet or been knee-capped by the Murdoch press, and nobody will
remember who the hell they were.

Nothing’s been the same since, with an embarrassing squelchy
sound out of one of the ropier Carry On films, I had my EU citizenship ripped
away against my will.Ever since then,
we’ve all been trapped aboard a speeding handcart, with half the occupants jubilantly
belting out Highway To Hell at the
tops of their voices, the rest of us bricking it and nobody at the damn
controls.Oh wait, suddenly our imperial
masters have seen fit to advise us that there is a driver, but it’s Theresa May, who last time I looked was the
answer to the question, “Which Prime Minister will dynamite our human rights
and deport that nice Polish couple who run the village shop?”

As if a rigged economic system and cringingly compliant
media weren’t enough for the Tories, they currently have another ace up their
expensively-tailored sleeves. No matter
how catastrophically they bugger things up, you can bet your commemorative “Controls
On Immigration” mug that the Labour Party will discover an ingenious way of out-buggering
them.

Boris’s craven whimperings, Mikey Gove’s self-impaling
assassination attempt, Andrea What’s-‘er-Name’s uterus fixation and the general
sense of disengaged drift represented a clear open goal for Her Majesty’s Opposition.
In reaction, quelle surprise, they
burst the ball with one of the corner flags, tried to beat the team captain to
a pulp with the other three and bared their arses in front of their supporters
before heading off to set fire to the dressing room. As English Labour members’ jaws clanked to the
floor, it was an act of superhuman self-control for Scots to resist saying, “We
told you so.”

The spearhead of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s mass V-sign
to party members, and useful idiot of expectantly lurking darker forces, has
been Angela Eagle. As Springwatch
aficionados will know, an eagle is clear-sighted, decisive and deadly, but
perhaps Angela’s twin sister Maria was the happy recipient of those genes. By contrast, Angela’s campaign, at least up
till yesterday, seemed to be channelling a vacillating Merseyside version of
Elmer Fudd: “I’m going to get that Jeremy if he doesn’t resign, so I am, as
soon as I’ve finished that big shop at Asda, and creosoted that garden fence,
and those bathroom tiles aren’t going to grout themselves.”When she finally drew herself up to her full
three feet eight inches and threw down the gauntlet with a resounding pffffft,
it was too late:BBC2 had already faded
her out in favour of in-house adverts, and Peston, Crick and wide-mouthed frog
Kuenssberg had legged it across town to watch Andrea Thingummyjig stand down for
“the good of the nation”.

All this chaos has, of course, put the spotlight firmly back
on the question of Scottish independence. Nicola’s been doing some impressive shuttle diplomacy,
which the agonised squeaks of the Unionist gutter press confirm has been going
down a storm with her European audience. Alyn Smith has also lit a fire amongst his
fellow MEPs, a clear sign that Scotland’s stance is a zillion miles from Farage’s
smirky adolescent triumphalism.But,
even from those in Brussels who wish Scotland nothing but love, kisses and
eternal chocolate treats (not to mention Rajoy, who wouldn’t piss on us if we
were on fire) the message is that a halfway-house arrangement won’t work, and
that if we’re to be welcomed into the EU fold we need to make a distinct break
from the UK.

Assuming Theresa’s jolly-hockeysticks “let’s make Brexit
work” approach entails the UK activating Article 50 before the last night of
the Proms, we have a really short horizon - and a gargantuan challenge - to
convince the doubters.It’s lovely to hear
all the anecdotal evidence of No voters gravitating to Yes, but sorry, folks, I
don’t buy it for a nanosecond.Wizard as
it is to contemplate J K Rowling crossing the divide, with 666 libel lawyers
doing a screechy handbrake turn and concentrating their venom on Brian Spanner,
it all sounds like the Unionist commentariat softening us up for a kick in the
goolies.

There are soft No votes to be won, possibly enough to take
us over the line, but it would be daft to be complacent and, anyway, we need to
go much further than that.I want to see
the case for self-governance established to the satisfaction of the most
sceptical voter.Even if my 90-year-old
dad, who thinks Nicola’s a wee besom, doesn’t accompany me to George Square for
the next rally, I’d like him at least to be heating a pizza and pouring a
sherry for me when I get back.Can we
achieve that? Hell, yes – if we do the background work and get it right!

Interesting times, as I’m sure Confucius would agree, even
if he wasn’t actually the source of the phrase. And a good time to be back on the
blogging scene.

Monday, 1 February 2016

Don't worry, folks, there'll be a new piece up here shortly, just as soon as it's been cleared by my solicitors. In the meantime, here's a short film from the amazing Phantom Power, celebrating the craft of blogging and remembering the halcyon days, just a week ago, when you could write the truth without all hell breaking loose.

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Politics has been a bit fraught this week, and I'm sure you need another how-you-should-vote article like a hedgehog needs a steamroller, so I thought I'd give everyone a nice break. Happily, this accords with my long-standing policy of being a snivelling coward, so it's a win all round.

It's Burns season, so here's another wee pastiche. I present it in the spirit of peace, love and understanding, so those losers at the Forfar Bridie People's Front had better not accuse me of hectoring or organise someone to slag me off in the National. And who knows what the Deep Fried Mars Bar Cult will think of it? They probably don't know themselves, not yet having had their instructions from Central Control. God, it's a minefield out there.To a Macaroni Pie

About Me

I'm a writer who returned to Scotland in 2013 after 30+ years in the Home Counties. If you enjoy reading my ramblings, please return often and recommend me to your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Planet Earth. That way someone may one day give me money to do this sort of thing, which would be nice.
william_duguid@hotmail.com